Certain software requires third parties to provide digital content in order to make the software valuable to users. A prime example is an application for rendering books, audio, video, etc. Such an application is useful only when digital content—e.g., text, audio, video, etc.—is available for use with the application or device, and such digital content is generally provided by third parties.
Typically, a user obtains the content by using a stand-alone web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator) to find and obtain content from Internet web sites that provide it. Sites that distribute content may be located with the aid of a search engine. This method, however, does not offer the user the convenience of shopping for content from within the rendering application.
As an alternative to the stand-alone browser, a browser may be integrated into the content-rendering application, and the application may be hard-coded to point the browser to one or more web sites that provide content. This approach, however, has drawbacks; if the universal record locators (URLs) of particular web sites are hard-coded into the browser, it is difficult to add or delete web sites to or from the list, or to customize the list for different instances of the application.
Branding is a term used for practices a merchant employs to distinguish his goods from similar goods or services sold by other merchants. Branding can be implemented through trademarks (i.e., a particular name or image identified with the source of the product), or trade dress (i.e., the overall look, feel or packaging that identifies a particular merchant).
Heretofore, it has been difficult for merchants to brand software because typically a software manufacturer distributes a given piece of software to a number of merchants, who sell that same piece of software. When software is sold on the Internet, the merchant may expose the consumer to branding information (e.g., the merchant's name on the web site), but only for a short time while the consumer completes the purchase or initiates a download. It may be desirable to “brand” the software by including a lasting mark in the software that indicates where the user purchased the software, or that otherwise causes the software to behave in a certain way based on the place where it was purchased.
The need for branding is particularly acute in the field of software that is given away for free in order to stimulate a market for another product, as in the case of a digital content retailer who gives away rendering software in the hope that users will purchase content compatible with the software. Such a retailer might like to brand the software in such a way that the user will be encouraged to return to the retailer's site to purchase content.
Conventionally, branding of software is achieved by creating different versions of the same software for each merchant who sells or distributes the software. This approach results in higher costs for a software producer because of time spent creating different versions of the software, testing it before release, and managing it thereafter. Furthermore, after the software is released, branding information is generally not changeable. Additionally, since each brand of the same software effectively represents a different version of the software, it is difficult to deploy a global upgrade of the software (i.e., replacement of every user's copy with an upgraded copy) without losing the branding information.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for a software branding system that overcomes the limitations and drawbacks of the prior art.